Brooks, Nike Lead U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon Shoe Count

Among the top 150 combined finisher's at the U.S. Olympic Trials, runners wore shoes from 13 different brands. Photo: Matt Trappe

We combed through race results, thousands of race photos and dozens of social media posts following the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in Los Angeles to determine an accurate shoe count of the top 75 finishers in both the men’s and women’s races. We stopped at 75 because it was increasingly difficult to locate photos and information about runners in the latter parts of each field.

Although it’s not necessarily statistically significant given the attrition in the race, Brooks had the most shoes among top-75 finishers in the men’s and women’s races at the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon on Feb. 13 in Los Angeles. Among the top 150 combined runners, Brooks claimed the feet of 27 runners—led by Desi Linden’s runner-up finish in the women’s race, followed by her Hansons-Brooks teammates Melissa White (15th, 2:39:57) and Jacob Riley (15th, 2:18:31). Brooks had 15 runners among the top 75 men and 12 runners among the top 75 women.

Nike was second with 26 pairs, including both race winners (Amy Cragg, 2:28:20, and Galen Rupp, 2:11:12) and three of the top six finishers in the women’s race (Cragg, Shalane Flanagan, 3rd, 2:29:19, and Janet Bawcom, 6th, 2:31:14) and three of the top eight finishers in the men’s race (Rupp, Luke Puskedra, 4th, 2:14:12 and Patrick Smyth, 8th, 2:15:26). Nike was the top brand among the first 75 women finishers, with 14 runners wearing the Swoosh.

Despite not having any finisher’s among the top 10 in either race, Adidas was third among shoe brands with 23 runners out of the top 150 combined total finishers, led by Tim Young (11th, 2:17:09), Jeffrey Eggleston (13th, 2:17:19), Augustus Maiyo (16th, 2:18:33) and Wendy Thomas (17th, 2:40:39).

In all, the top 150 combined finishers wore shoes from 13 different brands.

It’s hard to put any real meaning to such a tally, given that so many top runners dropped out of the race and because some runners at the back half of the top 50 in each race aren’t sponsored and may even pay for their own shoes. (In all, there were 149 women finishers and 105 men.) That said, it’s still interesting, considering the elite and sub-elite runners who did finish among the top 75 in their respective gender are still in the top percentile of American marathoners. In other words, these are the brands that runners choose to run fast marathons.